


carrion bones and sorrow

by TheTrillion



Series: Pillars of Bone [3]
Category: Minecraft (Video Game), Video Blogging RPF
Genre: Angst, Cross-Posted on Tumblr, Gen, Ghost Jschlatt (Video Blogging RPF) - Freeform, Ghost Wilbur Soot, Hurt No Comfort, Jschlatt-centric (Video Blogging RPF), Piglin Hybrid Wilbur Soot, The Sky Gods, associated tag: pillars of bone, at least currently, five by five world, ghosts chilling doing ghost things, honestly this entire au tends to just be sad, later on it's happy and people get them some Therapy, lava falling, pillars of bone au, randomizer skyblock, specifically past nov 16, spoilers for the events of Dream Smp, tnt raining, waters rising
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-01
Updated: 2021-01-01
Packaged: 2021-03-11 04:46:53
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,768
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28489281
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheTrillion/pseuds/TheTrillion
Summary: Schlatt should leave.His eyes linger on the boy with sharp, filed down teeth, with floppy pointed ears and sharp sharp claws, on the boy with grey hands and nothing eyes and…Schlatt doesn’t leave.-or: ghosts, and Schlatt wrestling with the fact that he's dead
Relationships: Jschlatt & Wilbur Soot
Series: Pillars of Bone [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2081136
Comments: 10
Kudos: 95





	carrion bones and sorrow

**Author's Note:**

> Of best friends and ghosts and betrayal and all the things in between

Hell, Schlatt has long learned, is nothing like what the living have believed it to be.

There is no fire and brimstone, no devils and demons with pitchforks waiting to torture them for eternity.

Instead, there is the all oppressing, all consuming _void._

Hell, real, honest to god _Hell,_ is much worse than anything any living soul can conjure, Schlatt decides.

.

.

.

He can leave, he knows this. The connection to the Hub is still there. His respawn star for this world may have broken, but his Hub star is still there, he can still leave.

If he were to leave, his hands would no longer be grey, his mind would no longer fuzz along the edges, his lungs would take in breath once more.

But if he were to leave, Schlatt knows that he would never come back.

Anger burns and simmers in the back of his throat, when he watches his funeral. Anger and grief and pain.

If he left, there would be no more whispers in his ears, no more memories of those thrice damned voices echoing around his office. If he were to leave, he would be free.

But here there is yellow, and it is nowhere else. And so, he stays.

.

.

.

“What do you remember?” The question is becoming a constant. Wilbur stares at him with his nothing-eyes and shakes.

He pretends to breath, because sometimes Wiblur even forgets he can’t anymore, and his fingers clutch at Schlatt’s blue sweater with aching force and Schlatt has to smother down the urge to yank away from black claws. Wilbur sometimes forgets his own strength, too. Schlatt still cringes at the memory of when he’d learned that even if they were dead, they could still hurt each other.

“Water,” Wilbur finally answers him, still shaking, still clutching at him. “Rising water. A flood. Rain. It was always raining.”

Claws carve through fabric, fade away into mist, reform, both perfectly untouched. Wilbur’s pretend breaths hitch.

“Leaving.” 

Twisting, yanking apart blue threads over and over again.

“Being alone.”

His fake breaths quicken.

“Drowning.”

.

.

.

Schlatt should leave.

His eyes linger on the boy with sharp, filed down teeth, with floppy pointed ears and sharp sharp claws, on the boy with grey hands and nothing eyes and…

Schlatt doesn’t leave.

.

.

.

Wilbur is a stick of TNT with two fuses, lit from both ends.

Schlatt has always known this, from the moment he met black eyes all those years ago, from the moment he’d seen bloody knuckles and bruised cheeks and had decided that _him, that one right there, he will be my friend,_ he has been able to see the ticking time bomb that is WilburSoot. He could see the way he caved in on himself overtime, a supernova, a star collapsing, and he was able to see the moment it expanded, the moment it swallowed everything whole.

He’s always known his friend was volatile.

Schlatt has always seen the way Wilbur has crumbled down, over and over and over, every single time there was a new fight or argument or simply another time that he was forgotten.

But he’d never thought that he would contribute.

They’d gotten into their fair share of fights, of course( _cursed, broken, unwanted,_ rings in his ears, his own voice filled with a venom he’s forever torn between agreeing to, and recoiling away from), but Schlatt had never thought…

But that was before. Before Dream. Before the threats. Before hearing about the man Wilbur had grown up to be.

He’d hated him, then, when he’d first stepped into the server.

Holding the shaking, _cold- oh so very cold, why is it so c ol d Schlatt?-_ ghost in his arms, he can’t find it in himself to feel that same hate anymore.

Maybe Dream was wrong. Maybe Dream had lied.

.

.

.

There is a space, a blank, in his memory. He knows this. He sees this. Wilbur went up in flames, following in his footsteps _(a van, a drink, too many enemies to think and two men settle miserable and pathetic between this all, armorless and powerless for all that they have forever held the world between their claw-tipped hands)_ and he cannot pinpoint the moment it happened. He cannot remember that one, single point when those fuses that had been steadily burning his entire life suddenly roared up from candle lights to wildfires.

Maybe it was the moment of the man’s exile, the words forever settled so solidly on Schlatt’s tongue like the poison he’s long drank. Maybe it was later than that, when his son loosed shot after shot until some finally met their mark.

Or maybe even further, hiding among the dark and dangerous and being so at home. A clawed monster fitting itself amongst the shadows and watching Schlatt’s every move with cruel, black eyes.

But then again, maybe it was before that.

Maybe it was at their first argument(his hands ache and his claws itched, screams long cut off filling his ears, _Wilbur would always respawn, what was the harm in giving in to his anger?)_ or maybe it was their last(there’s the burn, forever leaving his arm aching and _Wilbur had said that he would never raise a hand to him, he fucking_ **_li e d )_ ** _._

Maybe it was when Wilbur had stumbled into his server, into his home, with a child in his arms and had begged for help. Maybe it was when Schlatt had given this help, but had never asked _what happened_ or _why_ or _maybe you should rest._

Maybe he could’ve stopped this.

_The voices hiss and crackle in his ears, the gods demand he pay them in blood. He is helpless to fall under, drowning in liquid gold and honey._

.

.

.

“I was worse than you, I think,” the words hang in the air. They are in Wilbur’s little carved out home, buried blocks and blocks bellow L’manberg- _New_ L’manberg- where no one will search for them and no one will hear them.

There are only rats and water down here, and they fit right in.

Schlatt stares emptily at the books in his hands. He does not answer Wilbur.

“I got what was coming for me. I hope I accepted it well enough, in their eyes.”

They didn’t even give him a gravestone.

For some reason, this makes Schlatt ache.

(they gave him a funeral, and a wanted man had to bury his brother alone.)

.

.

.

“Your’re lying,” the words burn a line of fire up his throat. Wilbur still looks shaken from Fundy’s visit, body fuzzing along the edges worse than normal. “You’re- you fucking _lied_ to him.”

Schlatt doesn’t know why he was surprised. Maybe he just expected better from the man, maybe he’d just expected death and hell and that horrible void to have taught Wilbur better.

You would think that having your own father kill you would teach you a fucking lesson, somewhere along the lines.

Apparently not.

“It’s better like this. Like- it’s better if they don’t know- it’s-” Wilbur’s hands curl up, claws sliding through ghostly skin as easily as tissue paper only to leave no damage behind.

“It’s better if they don’t know so- so they- they won’t be _afraid of me.”_

The words hand like ash in the air.

Schlatt closes his eyes. He wants to bite back the anger, wants to reel himself in, because he knows that Wilbur is fragile, right now, his memories there but _weakly,_ the man barely grasping onto them.

But it’s lava under his skin, magma flowing up his throat, and his hands shake even though he’s _dead_ and there should be no shaking and his breath hisses through his teeth and _he’s so fucking angry._

“You’re a fucking coward,” he spits, lips curling. Wilbur flinches away from him, a line of static fuzzing along his chest, bisecting him in two, before settling. “You’re a fucking coward, hiding away from your family because you’d fucked up and you’re too afraid to admit it, too afraid to deal with the consequences of your actions. You always run away! You always do this, and I’m fucking sick of it!”

His chest heaves, but he’s dead and it’s more a long standing habit following him into death and he stares at Wilbur, stares into the ghost’s wide nothing-eyes and he _hates him so fucking much._

He spins around, storming out of the tiny little room filled with water and rats and things no one wants.

When he looks into the water of the sewers, into the faint reflections he still casts, he almost expects his eyes to be red.

But they’re yellow, yellow and and cross pupiled and he bares his teeth and _burns._

_._

_._

_._

The lava haunts his memories.

That’s where it starts, Schlatt decides, the knowledge curling bitter on his tongue, trapping him. Waters Rising had mostly been a bit, a joke between two friends as the world threatened to tear them apart.

It’s Lava Falling that everything began collapsing, when Schlatt’s hands gripped Wilbur’s wrists before twisting him around and _shoving_ him.

Right over the platform.

Right in the lava.

(the screams and squeals echo in his ears, shaking hands and red eyes staring into the piglin’s deep brown ones below.

Wilbur lasts ten seconds before allowing his respawn star to crack, letting go of his life in this world. Schlatt counts every single one.)

His hands clench. Lava Falling had been when he’s first given in. When he’s first listened to the voices and did as they asked.

(this is a lie, of course, because he’d painted the ground in Wilbur’s blood dozens of times in that first world, when they were ten. He’d taken that flimsy little sword he’d made and he’d fallen into the whispers’ loving embrace and had done everything they’d asked.

_A joke,_ he’d told Wilbur later, after his dog had torn out the other boy’s throat and he’d respawned again _. It was all a joke, don’t you see? No need to be upset._

Wilbur had shook, curled up in the corner. He’d sniffed, but agreed.

They don’t talk about it.)

.

.

.

He comes back hours later. Wilbur is no where in sight and the air tastes bitter even though Schlatt can’t taste anything at all, and so he sits, and he waits.

When Wilbur finally reforms, fuzzy and shaking and his grey skin looking blue, neither says anything.

Schlatt contemplates apologizing, for all of two seconds.

He agrees with what he said. Maybe in a better state of mind he would’ve been softer, but Wilbur…

Wilbur was dead. There was no _soft_ for the dead.

.

.

.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks y'all for reading this!! kudos and comments are hella appreciated but not required, no pressure
> 
> if any of y'all want to discuss more of this au, you can send me an ask on my tumblr or just yeet me a comment on this
> 
> _[Tumblr](https://like-that-one-weird-dog-thing.tumblr.com/)_


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